“It has put a fire up underneath me to make sure I prepare myself even more ferociously and fight more ferociously to make sure these things don’t happen to me because I’ve got so much more that I need to achieve in my career.”

His father, former world champion Chris Senior has come in for criticism for using the Blackwell incident as an example as to why next week’s referee should “protect” Groves in a series of posts on Twitter this week.

British Boxing Board of Control General Secretary Robert Smith said: “It’s not very helpful is it.

“We will look at this in detail. But the bottom line is that we will have a world class referee working this fight on the night and they will look after the safety of the fighters with great care as they always do.”